A patterned beam of EUV light can be used to expose a resist coated substrate, such as a silicon wafer, to produce extremely small features in the substrate. Extreme ultraviolet light (also sometimes referred to as soft x-rays) is generally defined as electromagnetic radiation having wavelengths in the range of about 5-100 nm. One particular wavelength of interest for photolithography occurs at 13.5 nm, and efforts are currently underway to produce light in the range of 13.5 nm+/−2% which is commonly referred to as “in band EUV” for 13.5 nm systems.
Methods to produce EUV light include, but are not necessarily limited to, converting a source material into a plasma state that has a chemical element with an emission line in the EUV range. These elements can include, but are not necessarily limited to xenon, lithium and tin.
In one such method, often termed laser produced plasma (“LPP”), the required plasma can be produced by irradiating a source material, for example, in the form of a droplet, stream or wire, with a laser beam. In another method, often termed discharge produced plasma (“DPP”), the required plasma can be generated by positioning source material having an EUV emission line between a pair of electrodes and causing an electrical discharge to occur between the electrodes.
As indicated above, one technique to produce EUV light involves irradiating a source material. In this regard, CO2 lasers outputting light at infra-red wavelengths, i.e., wavelengths in the range of about 9 μm to 11 μm, may present certain advantages as a so-called ‘drive’ laser irradiating a source material in an LPP process. This may be especially true for certain source materials, for example, source materials containing tin. One advantage may include the ability to produce a relatively high conversion efficiency between the drive laser input power and the output EUV power.
For LPP and DPP processes, the plasma is typically produced in a sealed vessel, such as a vacuum chamber, and monitored using various types of metrology equipment. In addition to generating in-band EUV radiation, these plasma processes also typically generate undesirable by-products. The by-products can include out-of-band radiation, high energy source material ions, low energy source material ions, excited source material atoms, and thermal source material atoms, produced by source material evaporation or by thermalizing source material ions in a buffer gas. The by-products can also include source material in the form of clusters and microdroplets of varying size and which exit the irradiation site at varying speeds. The clusters and microdroplets can deposit directly onto an optic or ‘reflect’ from the chamber walls or other structures in the chamber and deposit on an optic.
In more quantitative terms, one arrangement that is currently being developed with the goal of producing about 100 W of collected EUV radiation contemplates the use of a pulsed, focused 10-12 kW CO2 drive laser which is synchronized with a droplet generator to sequentially irradiate about 40,000-100,000 tin droplets per second. For this purpose, there is a need to produce a stable stream of droplets at a relatively high repetition rate (e.g., 40-100 kHz or more) and deliver the droplets to an irradiation site with high accuracy and good repeatability in terms of timing and position (i.e. with very small “jitter”) over relatively long periods of time. Generally, it is desirable to use relatively small droplets, such as droplets having a diameter in the range of about 10-50 μm to reduce the amount of plasma produced debris that is generated in the chamber.
One technique for generating droplets involves melting a target material such as tin and then forcing it under high pressure through a relatively small diameter orifice, such as an orifice having a diameter of about 0.5-30 μm, to produce a stream of droplets having droplet velocities of about 30-100 m/s. Under most conditions, naturally occurring instabilities, e.g. noise, in the stream exiting the orifice, may cause the stream to break-up into droplets. In order to synchronize the droplets with the optical pulses of an LPP drive laser, a repetitive disturbance with an amplitude exceeding that of the random noise may be applied to the continuous stream. By applying a disturbance at the same frequency (or its higher harmonics) as the repetition rate of the pulsed laser, the droplets can be synchronized with the laser pulses. For example, the disturbance may be applied to the stream by coupling an electro-actuatable element (such as a piezoelectric material) to the stream and driving the electro-actuatable element with a periodic waveform.
As used herein, the term “electro-actuatable element” and its derivatives, means a material or structure which undergoes a dimensional change when subjected to a voltage, electric field, magnetic field, or combinations thereof and includes, but is not limited to, piezoelectric materials, electrostrictive materials and magnetostrictive materials.
As indicated above, droplet generators are currently being designed to produce droplets continuously for relatively long periods such as several weeks or longer, producing billions of droplets. During these operational periods, it is generally not practical to stop and re-start the droplet generator. Moreover, during these operational periods, the relatively small nozzle orifice may become partially clogged with deposits from impurities in the target material. When the nozzle orifice becomes partially clogged, droplets may leave the nozzle in a different direction than they would if the nozzle was free of deposits. This change in droplet stream pointing can adversely affect EUV output and conversion efficiency by causing an incomplete or non-optimum interaction between the laser beam and droplet. Failure to properly irradiate a droplet may also increase the amount of certain types of problematic debris such as clusters and microdroplets.
During operation, the output beam from an EUV light source may be used by a lithography exposure tool such as a stepper or scanner. These exposure tools may first homogenize the beam from the light source and then impart the beam with a pattern in the beam's cross-section, using, for example, a reflective mask. The patterned beam can then be projected onto a portion of a resist-coated wafer. Once a first portion of the resist-coated wafer (often referred to as an exposure field) has been illuminated, the wafer, the mask or both may be moved to irradiate a second exposure field, and so on, until irradiation of the resist-coated wafer is complete. During this process, the scanner typically requires a so-called burst of pulses from the light source for each exposure field. For example, a typical burst period may last for a period of about 0.5 seconds and include about 20,000 EUV light pulses at a pulse repetition rate of about 40 kHz. The length of the burst period, number of pulses and repetition rate may be selected based on EUV output pulse energy, and the accumulated energy, or dose, specified for an exposure field. In some cases, pulse energy and/or repetition rate may change during a burst period and/or the burst may include one or more non-output periods.
In this process, sequential bursts may be temporally separated by an intervening period. During some intervening periods, which may last for about a fraction of a second, the exposure tool prepares to irradiate the next exposure field and does not need light from the light source. Longer intervening periods may occur when the exposure tool changes wafers. An even longer intervening period may occur when the exposure tool swaps out a so-called “boat” or cassette which holds a number of wafers, performs metrology, performs one or more maintenance functions, or performs some other scheduled or unscheduled process. Generally, during these intervening periods, EUV light is not required by the exposure tool, and, as a consequence, one, some, or all of these intervening periods may represent an opportunity to remove deposits from a droplet generator nozzle.
With the above in mind, Applicants disclose a Droplet Generator with Actuator Induced Nozzle Cleaning, and corresponding methods of use.